God, she was sweet. But he declined. He really wasn’t that hungry. Did she realize just how poor he was? She lived in a world so far removed from financial stress and strain that it wouldn’t have surprised him if she’d not given the matter any thought at all. We all assume everyone we meet is in the same social class we are, David thought.
Almost as if she could read his mind, Anna asked him about the job he had mentioned briefly earlier that morning.
“It doesn’t really start for a few weeks yet. But they did give me some free-lance assignments.”
“An artist,” she sighed. “I’d love to see some of your work sometime.”
“You will. Hopefully on a greeting card one of these days.”
“Is that your specialty? “
“No. I’ve also dabbled in cartooning, commercial art —of a different type. Y’know, for ads and things.”
“I once had a friend who drew comic books.”
“Ah, a lucrative field. For the publishers, at least. I’m afraid my style isn’t really suited for that kind of thing, although I admire their work. Some comic books and comic strips are beautifully done.”
Their coffee came. Record time, thought David. The place was underpopulated and overstaffed this morning.
“Has your work appeared in magazines? Anything I might have seen?”
He paused for a moment, wondering how much humiliation he was prepared to endure at this moment. “Uh, Anna, I’m an artist, but,” he laughed without humor, “not a successful artist. I’m really just starting out. In fact, I’ve been ‘starting out’ for the last ten years. This job I’ve told you about is my first real break. My work has yet to grace a greeting card, but now . . . that might just change. Finally.”
She smiled very warmly and understandingly, and put her hand over his. “It always takes time. Lots of people work hard all their lives, and boom—they’re forty-five and famous. Look at it this way. You’re a step ahead of them, you’re still in your thirties.”
“Forget famous, at this point I’ll settle for being solvent.” Idiot! Why did you have to say that?
“I think you’ll be very successful.” She raised her coffee cup, and prompted him to do the same. She clinked his cup with hers. “To the future.”
The coffee was lukewarm, weak and bitter, but somehow he just didn’t care. In fact, he barely noticed, so intent was he upon her smile.
It was a quiet day in the town of Milbourne, like every other day (except perhaps for the time when Jake Astor’s convertible had crashed into the five-and-ten store on a drunken Saturday night). When things, bad things, happened, people usually whispered the news from family to family, nodding their heads in sympathy, calling the bereaved with kind words, calling on them with warm soup. That was how the news of Jeffrey Braddon’s death got circulated.
But now something had happened which eclipsed the man’s horrible death—the “full” facts of which were known to only a few—and that was the disappearance of four Milbourne youths who had been camping down by Hunter’s Mountain.
Chief Walters had received a call from Sue Benson’s mother the previous night after supper. She had called the parents of the other three children—two boys, one girl—who had accompanied her daughter, but none of them had known what might have been the cause of their delay. Jack Potter’s father was half-drunk as usual; he neither knew nor cared where his son might be. Emily Silverstein’s folks were worried, but had wanted to wait a while longer before pressing the panic button. After all, the children were only an hour or so overdue. Mrs. Benson couldn’t believe that her daughter would stay out later than she had promised to unless something awful had happened. Taking the initiative, something she frequently did to her husband’s regret, she called up Walters and demanded that he send out a search party.
In the city, the Police Chief thought, in the city they would have laughed at her. Four kids kicking around, not even a few hours late? Big deal. In the city they would have laughed at the woman and told her to call back in twenty-four, hell, forty-eight hours. But in a small town like this there was room for leeway. The Bensons were comparative newcomers to the town, and they were overprotective of their daughter, but Joe Walters knew what the mountains and the forest were like after dark, knew that four kids fooling around could get in serious trouble, and decided to get Patrolman Hanson and take a run up to the area himself.
They’d found the cars all right, but no sign of the kids. They’d poked and probed around with their flashlights, but there was nothing to indicate foul play or much of anything else. The kids could have gone anywhere, in any direction. All Chief Walters could do was notify the parents and hope the children came back to their cars from wherever they went and were back in their beds before midnight.
Doug Withers’ parents called him almost every hour on the hour. Sam Withers drove up to the picnic area and looked around himself. They’d not spent all those years raising their beloved son, building their hopes for the boy’s future, only to see him lost in the forest. By the time dawn came, all the parents—except for Jack’s father—were there at the encampment, along with Patrolmen Hanson and Stevens. The brunt of the blame was placed squarely on Jack Potter, who had been doomed to pay for the “sins of the father” until his untimely death. “I know that damn kid is behind this,” Sam Withers kept saying over and over, as if the boy’s guilt would somehow bring his son back to him. By noontime, the wives had gone back home for sleep and consolation, while the men stayed out beating through the brush, struggling up and down little-used trails, tip and down cowpaths, through fields and along streams, shouting out the names of four people who would never be able to answer.
Chief Walters was grabbing a quick bite at his desk when Anna Braddon—the Anna Braddon—walked in with a bright-faced young man he had never seen before.
They introduced themselves. Cecilia, the dispatcher, a tubby, middle-aged lady with shockingly bleached hair, was staring at them unabashedly, and Tony, the building’s janitor, stopped his sweeping to survey that woman he swore he saw huckstering goods on the television set virtually every night. The police station, actually a substation since the town was so small, was just a big, square room with partitioned offices in the back, a lot of desks in the front, and the switchboard off to one side. The building was old. The floorboards creaked and the paint was peeling. The only thing modern about the room, the newly installed fluorescent lights overhead, seemed out of place, and lent the room a harsh glow that bathed everything in an ugly, eye-straining hue.
Before Anna could say anything more, Walters said, “You didn’t have to come all the way up here, Mrs. Braddon. We could have handled everything over the phone. Shipping the body, everything. Of course, there are your brother’s personal effects. But there’s no—uh— hurry for that.”
“We—I came here for information, Officer. There are a lot of things I don’t understand about Jeffrey’s death and . . .” She looked at the chair in front of Walter’s desk. “May I sit down?”
He gestured. “Be my guest.” David stood in back of Anna, as if hovering protectively. The Chief could have had one of the offices in back if he had so desired, but he had (although he would never admit it} a mild case of claustrophobia. It had never interfered with his work and had not prevented him from going down in that hole in the Forester Building with Harry London, but he saw no need to sit in an enclosed space when it wasn’t even necessary. So he sat at a big desk in the middle of the room, where he could keep an eye on everything, and everyone could keep an eye on him. He was always in and out, in and out all the time anyway, so the position of his desk had never been very important.
“You spoke to my husband yesterday,” Anna continued. “And he—he told me that the details—surrounding Jeffrey’s death were quite unpleasant. I know you’re only trying to spare my feelings, but you see she almost started to cry, “. . . he was my brother. The least I can do it find out, is understand, what happened to him.”
Police Chief
Walters put down his sandwich and leaned back in his chair. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and exhaled dramatically. “Mrs. Braddon. I fully understand what you’re going through. But to be perfectly honest with you, we don’t know what killed your brother. His body was found in a state of deterioration. The coroner determined that he had been dead for at least a week, but that wouldn’t have accounted for all his injuries.”
As if sensing that Anna could use more than a little support, David said, “We heard he was killed falling through a broken floor . . .”
“The fall didn’t kill him, as far as we can tell. The condition of his body was such that a lot of things we might have found out are now impossible to discern. The floor in the storeroom where he worked was broken. We assume he fell through to a sub-basement level, a cavern which appears to run underneath the street for several blocks. His body was found quite a distance away from the area where he fell. Like I said, we still don’t know what killed him.”
“He couldn’t have starved to death?”
“If he had been down there alive for a week, maybe. With a broken leg, unable to yell for help. Hut tin-coroner says he was dead for a week, which meant he probably died the same day he fell through the floor. The coroner’s guess—and it is only a guess—is that he died from certain injuries which he sustained not from the fall, but from something else which he came into contact with in the cavern.”
“What?”
“We don’t know.”
“Animals of some sort?” David suggested.
“That seems to be indicated.” Walters looked quickly at Anna to see how she was taking it. He was eaten, your brother was eaten. He felt bile rising from the thought of what he had seen down in that cavern. Your brother was eaten. Your brother is dead.
“What’s being done to find out, to find out what, or who, was responsible for Jeffrey’s death?”
“The coroner is performing certain tests.” He saw the grimace on her face. “I know it’s unpleasant, but it has to be done. That’s why we haven’t released the body yet. I know you’d like to be able to make complete funeral arrangements. You should be able to by the end of the week, if not earlier. While you’re up here you can drive over to Jeffrey’s house, if you’d like, take a look at his belongings. We’ve gone though them, of course. Far as we can tell he didn’t have a lawyer and he never made a will, so I assume the house will belong to you now. And everything in it. You might want to pack it all up and sell the place. But perhaps I’m being a bit premature.”
“I hadn’t even thought of that,” Anna said, smiling tightly. “Is there—is there a lot?”
“I imagine so. Your brother lived here for several years. Things have a way of accumulating. It will probably take more than a day to get things in order.”
“My brother and I lost contact over the years. Did he have any friends, close friends, up here I could talk to?”
“Why don’t you talk to his employer, Harry London? He knew Jeffrey quite well. Was a good friend, too.” He told her where the store and Jeffrey’s house were located. “I believe Harry also had a set of keys to Jeffrey’s place. I’m sure he’ll be glad to give them to you.”
“Thank you.”
“Is there anything else, Miss Braddon? “
“No. You’ll let me know if you find out anything more, won’t you?” She rose from her chair and shook his hand.
“Of course,” said the Chief as he rose, grasped first her hand, then David’s. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Braddon, I want you to know that. We all liked your brother very much here.”
She thanked him, and walked silently and slowly toward the door, the young man holding onto her shoulder. Chief Walters stared after them long after they had gone out into the street.
Cecelia came over, her hand to her mouth, eyes aglow. “Isn’t she beautiful?” she gushed. “I didn’t dare ask for her autograph. Is she coming back?”
“No,” Walters said, “I don’t think we’ll be seeing her here again.”
Meanwhile the search continued for the four young people who had vanished overnight. By now many neighbors and friends of the youngsters’ families had joined the search parties, spreading out over wider and wider areas of the woods surrounding the base of Hunter’s Mountain. Unfortunately, the searchers focused their efforts almost exclusively on the southeast side, where the cars had been parked, assuming that the kids had stayed in that area. If the men and women combing the woods had all been trained in such endeavors, they might have noticed unmistakable, if subtle signs which would have indicated the direction taken by the four youths. Even the police officers, outnumbered ten to one by the civilians, weren’t experts in the art of tracking. Someone suggested they go over and look in the old caves on the other side of the mountain, but the caves had been passé as meeting and making-out points for teenagers for so many years that no one thought anyone bothered going there anymore. The caves were like a “haunted house” that had been slept in overnight without any harm coming to the participants, demystified due to the lack of ghosts or demons. The dangerous, romantic aspect of the caves, too, had been challenged and found wanting. No one bothered with them now. Rumor had it that they all ended a few yards within the mountains, and had been thoroughly explored without ever revealing any secrets.
“Forget the caves,” someone else muttered. “I still say the kids are somewhere in this area.”
Many of the people in the impromptu search parties were participating only for the sake of the parents. Most of them firmly believed that the kids were playing a joke, or had gone off to another town on impulse, gone on a spree for a lark, without a care for how their parents might react, deliberately leaving the cars behind so that no one would suspect that they’d left the area. Maybe they’d been afraid people might spot the cars on the road as they traveled, so they’d walked or hitchhiked instead. Children never did things that made any sense.
That darn Jack Potter, son of a drunkard, could talk the teenagers into doing anything. That good-looking critter had the kind of matinee-idol features that could easily persuade schoolgirls to engage in unnatural acts. For the parent’s sakes, the townspeople trudged through the woods calling out names, brushing past tree branches and spiny bushes, knowing all the while that the brats would show up before dark with some stupid excuse and a smirk on their foolhardy faces. Few took the search very seriously.
Still, a few of them started up the same path the teens had taken the previous morning. Emily’s mother had been the only parent to see her child actually leave the house, and had finally remembered the backpack strapped to the girl’s shoulders. “I wondered why she took that, instead of the cooler. She never mentioned doing any climbing.”
On the chance that they were still up in the woods, at a campfire somewhere, a few men set out along the mountain trail, stocked up with a few six packs for aid and comfort. They would have cursed and muttered what everyone else was cursing and muttering, only Sam Withers was with them and they had to keep their mouths shut. They feared what would happen when he got his hands on Douglas. If the kid was alive he’d soon wish he wasn’t. Each of them firmly believed they’d find the boy and his pals somewhere on the trail, puffing joints, maybe rollin’ in the buff (most of them would have loved to see the girls in their birthday suits) in the manner of all wayward, rebellious youth. “He’s gonna catch it but good, when his pa gets his hands on him,” they whispered. “Mom’s near worried out of her mind.”
So no one went directly to the caves. It would be a few hours before the men on the trail would reach that particular point.
And down there in the darkness something waited.
The hardware store did a thriving business that day.
Harry London sat in his office and wondered if it had anything to do with Jeffrey Braddon’s death. He concluded that it didn’t. True, since Jeff had had no family in town, this was the only place where people could, in a sense, come and pay their respects, talk to other people who knew him. Some h
ad asked morbid questions, as was to be expected. But most who had known the man simply muttered regrets. Some even went so far as to express sympathy for Paula; her feelings for Jeffrey had not been as secret as Harry had suspected. Everyone seemed to be buying things they would have needed and would have bought even had the tragedy not occurred. That was a small consolation. At least Harry could never say he had profited from someone else’s death.
It would have been an easier day if Paula hadn’t stayed out, although he understood what she was going through. He had sat with her at her house for a good part of the last two evenings, saying little, making her tea, holding her hand. How much he had wanted to comfort her, to tell her: You are still loved. But her mind had been on one man only, as was proper, and it might be some time before she could have room in her heart for another. What was that he had thought about never profiting from tragedy?
The trainees Paula had supervised the other day weren’t working out very well, and for the first time in years, Harry found himself working a full shift behind the counter. Normally, he only stepped in for a while on special occasions with certain customers, usually spending his time on the books, huddled over order forms, arguing on the phone, supervising. He had worked long and hard and had earned the right to what basically amounted to semi-retirement. Still, he found that working as a clerk as he had in the old days was somewhat energizing. It was nice to be able to talk to the customers, to trade gossip, to ask how their kids were and how things were going in general.
The minute he saw Roger conferring with them and pointing in his direction, Harry knew that the couple walking towards him weren’t customers, but rather were here to see him exclusively on a special matter; he could tell from the solemn look on their faces. Harry was not a great fan of television, therefore did not recognize Anna Braddon, and the man she was with was just as much a stranger. He didn’t notice any family resemblance between the woman and his late employee until after she had told him who she was.
Spawn of Hell Page 13
